Posted April 20, 2009

La Brea Tar Pits





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La Brea Tar Pits and the Page Museum The Page Museum is located at the Rancho La Brea Tar Pits in the heart of Los Angeles. Rancho La Brea is one of the world's most famous fossil localities, recognized for having the largest and most diverse assemblage of extinct Ice Age plants and animals in the world. The tar in the La Brea Tar Pits comes from an underground petroleum deposit leaking to the surface creating a four inch pool of sticky tar. The surface becomes covered in leaves and dust, causing animals to occasionally wander into it without knowing, sometimes becoming trapped. Predators probably gathered around the pits in ancient times, looking for a free meal, and got stuck themselves. A partial human skeleton was even found in the La Brea Tar Pits, a Native American woman who lived about 9,000 years ago. Even Archeologists today quite by accident have gotten stuck in this tar and have had to leave their boots behind in order to escape. More than 100 tar pits are located within the 23 acres of Hancock Park. While most were excavated in the early 1900's, Pit 91 was reopened in 1969, and work continues there today. What Have Scientists Learned From Pit 91? The annual excavation of Pit 91 at the La Brea Tar Pits has provided scientists with extensive data on the climate and ecology of the Los Angeles Basin 28,000 years ago. Most of the plant species and many of the insect and molluscan species are known either mainly or exclusively due to the ongoing excavation. Excavated fossils are brought to the Paleontology Laboratory at the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits, where the public can watch scientists carefully clean, identify, label and catalogue the fossils. At our tour of the La Brea Tar Pits we watched the scientists work in "The Fishbowl" a glass enclosed room in which tourists can peer in and watch the archeologists at work. We saw Zed an extinct mammoth who had died at a nearby creek in which asphalt needed up coating him rather well being 80% preserved. We witnessed the giant pelvis bone being turned over for the first time by eight scientists, which was quite a job as this pelvis bone was huge. Zed is a Colombian mammoth and has become the first nearly intact mammoth to be found near the La Brea tar pits with 10-feet long intact tusks. An estimated 34 mammoths have been found previously, but only in bits and pieces. Zed was found at that area 91 site along side the skeletons of a complete saber-toothed cat, a giant ground sloth, and a North American lion. Zed is about 10 feet tall at the hip and died before he reached full maturity. This display gives us the opportunity to get a detailed picture of what life was like 10,000 to 40,000 years ago" in the Los Angeles Basin, nearby George C. Page Museum. La Brea Tar Pits 5801 Wilshire Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90036 (323) 934-7243 www.tarpits.org


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